


Nothing He Ever Wanted

by halfpastmorrow



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-09
Updated: 2010-01-09
Packaged: 2017-10-06 01:19:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfpastmorrow/pseuds/halfpastmorrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are strange goings on at Hogwarts. Smut, humor, and a side of Hagrid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing He Ever Wanted

**Author's Note:**

  * For [snapetoy](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=snapetoy).



> For Merry Smutmas.

The day his life changed, three unusual things happened to Severus Snape before breakfast. He overslept and his morning tea was cold, he found a crudely made pomander tacked to the outside of his office door, and he kissed Argus Filch when he passed him on the stairs.

The rest of the day was business as usual. Brown and Patil twittered at the back of his classroom, ignoring their potions until they hissed, spat and boiled over. He had to dodge Karkaroff, who was skulking around the entrance to the Slytherin common room again, questioning his students, and he was nearly killed exiting the Great Hall after dinner.

"Watch it," he snapped, ducking an enormous fir tree.

Hagrid's head emerged out of the branches on the other side. "Sorry. Didn' see yeh there, Professor."

"What in blue blazes are you doing with that indoors?"

"Er, Professor Flitwick wanted it. He's decoratin' fer the Yule Ball," Hagrid said, giving Snape a careful, sideways look that made him want to scream. He wasn't the most festive person by nature, so it wasn't at all strange he should have forgotten. "Are yeh feelin' all right?"

Snape yelped, ducking again as Hagrid spun around and propped the tree against the lintel of the open door. "I'm fine. A momentary lapse. Nothing to worry about."

"Are yeh sure?" Hagrid seemed quite anxious about it for some reason. "Don't want me ter fetch someone? Yeh don't seem to be feelin' yerself."

Snape folded his arms across his chest. "What I want is for you to unblock the doorway, so I can get on my way. Don't look at me like that, Hagrid. I forgot the bloody date. It isn't like I pitched face first into my dinner."

"If yer sure..." Hagrid pulled the tree to one side, and Snape slipped out the door.

"I trust you won't maim anybody with the next one," he called over his shoulder as he departed, and Hagrid chuckled.

"Right yeh are."

What with one thing and another, by the time Snape retired for the evening, the events of the morning had been long forgotten, save for the scent of orange and cloves that chased him down into sleep.

*

It wasn't until the next evening that Snape thought about the kiss again.

He happened across Filch on his way to the Owlery late that night. He had a fistful of reminders for his first-years on the value of homework. Their end of term marks had been abysmal and he was damned if he would give Minerva the chance to gloat.

It wasn't uncommon for him to see Filch on his nightly circuit of the castle, but what was usually a chance for a chat with someone of a like mind became something else. Filch, head darting back and forth, looked more anxious than he ought for someone carrying out a regular duty, and Snape remembered at once what had happened. More to the point, he remembered the bug-eyed look that had appeared on Filchís face before he had rushed up the stairs away from him.

Moonlight lit the snowy central courtyard brighter than daylight, but barely penetrated the depths of the covered walkway on the south side. Snape circled Filch at a cautious distance, struggling in the dim light to read his face. By rights there should be disgust or anger there, but he couldn't be sure. He felt twitchy just being in Filch's presence. It was guilt, he supposed, or should have been. The details were sketchy, but he owed Filch an apology, that much was certain. Just how you apologised for inadvertently jumping someone, though, he wasn't sure.

Afterward he could not be certain how it had happened. He only knew something had compelled him forward, with the same inexorable force as the moon on the tides, until he had Filch pressed against the rough stone wall, and when he opened his mouth, it wasn't an apology he delivered but a kiss.

Filch tasted spicy like mulled wine. It was heady, intoxicating, driving Snape crazy. A wave of urgency rolled over him, and he drove his tongue deeper and deeper into the warmth, forcing a rumbling groan from Filch's chest. This time Snape was unable to mistake it for protest - not with the way Filch cupped his face in both hands, said, "Easy now, Professor. No need to get ahead of ourselves," and kissed him again.

Filch kissed him over and over, with less heat and more languor than before, until Snape was rubbing up against him, letters crushed in his fist, insensible of anything else.

A slight cough beside his ear brought him to his senses, and he stumbled backwards.

The statue of a long-faced man with a moustache peered at them from the other side of the walkway, an expression of mild annoyance on his face. Three small stone dogs lay snoring at his feet. "I say," he said, "would you mind taking that somewhere else. It does make it rather difficult to sleep."

"Beggin' your pardon," Filch said, with a nod toward the statue. He caught Snape's elbow and led him down to the other end of the walkway.

At the far end, Snape shrugged off the hand and drew himself away.

"Well now," Filch said, with a self-satisfied smile, "that was..."

"...odd," Snape finished, smoothing his rumpled robe and straightening his back. His head felt clearer with a little distance. "And best forgotten, I think. It's important to maintain some professional distance, wouldn't you agree?"

Filch stared at him for a moment, his face impassive. "Right, then," he said, and whistled for Mrs. Norris. "I'll be off."

*

Of course, Snape couldn't forget.

And he kept on not forgetting at the most inopportune moments. He thought about the feel of Filch's hands on his face, rough and calloused, while lecturing the third years on the uses of dragon skin, the little noises he made, while listening to the murmur of a room full of bubbling cauldrons, and the taste of his mouth, while eating a baked apple at dinner.

He went to the library and buried himself in research to try to escape. For a while it worked; his idea for a potion to provide chemoprophylaxis against the Imperius curse, though still in the early stages of development, was posing an interesting dilemma. Theoretically, the addition of mandragora should allow him to decrease the dosage while still maintaining the potency, but when added, it caused the periwinkle to sediment out. Perhaps the answer lay in the method of combination, not the ingredients.

Snape was deep into the design for a fresh batch of tests when he heard footsteps behind him.

"I think I might have an idea about that potion we were discussing, Headmaster."

A shadow fell across the desk. When he saw the profile wasn't Dumbledore's, he stood up so fast his chair tipped over backward. That restless, twitchy feeling set up under his skin again. His hands shook, he wanted to touch Filch so badly. It wasn't right, and he tensed, preparing to turn tail and run.

"Oh no, you don't, Snape," Filch growled, hand shooting out to grab Snape's upper arm. "You aren't getting away that easily."

Filch drew him away from the lamp-lit desk into the dim recesses of the stacks and spun him around. Parchment scattered across the floor as he pulled him easily back against his chest. "I know you want this," he said, low and dirty, mouth against his ear.

Snape wanted to protest, but Filch cupped a hand over his groin and he couldn't find the words.

Filch swept his thumb back and forth over the head of Snape's lengthening cock. "Tell me what you want. Do you want to be sucked, to feel this..." His tongue flickered out against Snape's ear lobe. "...on your cock?"

"Filch," Snape said, already feverish, desperate. He ground up once against the heel of Filch's hand before he could stop himself.

"Somewhere else, then. Or perhaps it's a proper buggering you're in need of, eh?"

"Oh, God," Snape groaned, shuddering. He couldn't see Filch, only feel the strength of his grip and his humid breath against his neck. Each touch seemed magnified, stretched somehow, in the darkness. "Would you... would you kiss me?"

And then there it was, the same spicy taste that had driven him crazy all day, and he was standing there, shaking and coming. He was so limp afterward it only took a slight push to one shoulder to bring him to his knees.

*

On his way back to his rooms, Snape spotted a light coming from his classroom and poked his head in to investigate. Hagrid sat at one of the workbenches, puzzling over something in a large leather-bound book. Snape stood in the doorway and watched him for a moment, nursing his aching jaw.

The area in front of Hagrid was covered with bottles and jars of every size and a mortar and pestle. Every now and then he would pick up a jar, frown at the label, and add the contents to the mortar. Juniper berries, cloves, rosehips and dried orange rind, all went in the same way. His method was hardly scientific, but the ingredients seemed harmless enough. Until Hagrid reached for something in a particular squat green bottle that sent Snape striding across the room.

"Are you trying to poison yourself?"

Hagrid's head jerked up. "Eh?"

"The mandrake root, you... you..." Snape pulled himself up short at the shocked look on Hagrid's face.

"But the book says..."

"I don't care what it says. Mandrake root can't be ingested, not without adding the proper complements to the mix." Snape made an abortive grab for the book. "Where did you find such rubbish anyway? Not in the library."

"It were me dad's." Hagrid had clamped one of his large hands on top of the book, but not before Snape got a glimpse of the text.

"Right, then," he said, with a little cough.

"Itís not what yeh think," Hagrid said, blushing brick red beneath his beard. "It's a gift."

Snape uncapped one of the jars. "For Madam Maxime, I suppose."

"Olympe?" Hagrid said, sounding startled. Snape didn't know why; a one-eyed house-elf could see what was going on there. "Er, yeah."

"A stronger concentration of damiana should work instead of the mandrake root," Snape said, shaking the herb into the mix.

"Yeh don't mind?" Hagrid asked, his voice seeming to stick in his throat. Snape hoped the night wasn't going to end with intimate revelations. A weepy Hagrid was always a danger. "I know it ain't exactly legal."

"Nor is it the crime of the century. Honestly, Hagrid, you'd think you had no idea what you were playing with. Everyone and their grandmother has a set of potions recipes like these. They won't kill, maim, or otherwise harm you ñ unless you are stupid beyond all measure, that is," Snape said, snatching up the jar of ground mandrake root up, and waving it about to make his point. "And they certainly won't induce passion where there was none. No, you'd do as well to take her to the Three Broomsticks and buy her several jars of mulled mead as make this tea."

Hagrid frowned. "It won't work then?"

"Did you not hear what I said? Of course it will _work._ That's not the point." He looked at Hagrid again. "Oh, for the love of... Add a pinch or two of ground mandrake root to your fire before, you know... It might also help get her in the mood."

"Thank yeh. It's been..."

The strained expression on Hagrid's face indicated the dam might be about to burst, and Snape held up one hand to forestall it. "Understand one thing, Hagrid. I _don't_ want to know."

*

Next day, another lopsided pomander had been hung on his door, this time along with a loose wreath of rosemary and lavender. Snape's fingers tingled where he touched them, as though they had been charmed. And he couldn't keep his hands off Filch.

They met three times: twice by accident and once by design. Snape found Filch sweeping pine needles off the entrance hall floor, dragged him into the broom closet, and sucked him to hardness then and there, and then again in the curtained alcove beneath the east tower stairs, one hand jammed into his own underwear. Both times, Filch had hauled him off with a promise of later.

Later hadn't come soon enough as far as he as concerned.

It was like being seventeen, when love of Lucius Malfoy and his cock had overwhelmed his good sense. He had seen the inside of more than a few closets then, and dusty alcoves, shadowed corners, narrow backstairs and the castle's many, many disused rooms. He had learned more of the castle's secrets during that frenzied period than any time since.

He wasn't disappointed. Filch fucked him for hours that night with fingers, cock and tongue, in a display of formidable talent. On the floor, against the wall, and across the wide expanse of crisp, new sheets.

And he wasn't allowed to come.

"Oh, fuck," he said, reduced to begging. "Let me... oh, let me..." He knew better than to touch his cock himself, and tried to brace himself up on limbs that felt like spaghetti and thrust back on the tongue teasing him. He wanted it over. He wanted it to go on forever. He just _wanted,_ because underneath everything was a nagging itch that wouldn't be satisfied.__

"Later," Filch rasped in answer, hauling Snape upright and spitting him open around his cock.

That was how he knew Filch felt it too.

*

It wasn't enough.

Like an addiction, the symptoms grew worse with each passing day. Nothing, it seemed, could cool his ardour. Snape had never found the sight of Filch mopping snow and mud off the entrance hall floor enticing before. Not even the sight of him up to his elbows in slime after yet another Longbottom-induced accident in the Potions classroom was enough to put him off. Worse, he was caught ogling the man's arse when two of his fourth year students turned up early for the next lesson.

"If you don't mind, Miss Bones," he said, ushering them into the classroom and glaring as though he had no idea what her giggles were about.

Dignity, it turned out, was difficult to maintain when your palms were sweaty and you were forced to endure the fish-slapped expression on Hannah Abbott's face every time you turned around. Verisimilitude potions were the topic of the day, but he could have been lecturing on the value of nasal hair as a digestive aid for all he knew.

The rest of his classes that day were similarly disastrous. Whispering and note passing were rife, all discipline thrown out the window. Even for the last day of classes, it was appalling. Only his first years were in the least subdued, and he handed out more than a few essays to be completed over the Christmas break.

The uproar didn't end at his classroom door either. In hindsight, he should have known the clusters of whispering students in the halls had more to do with the looming Yule Ball than anything Miss Bones had seen. He didn't make the connection, though, until he found a love potion being bandied around the Slytherin common room.

And then he made more than one.

*

"I need urine," Snape said, without looking up, when Filch hunted him down in his office a few hours later.

Filch caught the large glass jar Snape thrust at his abdomen. "Are you off your trolley?" he said, eyes blazing.

"No, and I'll need blood too."

Filch grunted as Snape yanked a few grizzled strands of hair from his head. "You'd better have a damn good reason for this, Snape."

Snape added one of the hairs to the cauldron steaming on his desk. "Hmm, we've been drugged," he said, stirring the mixture vigorously.

"What?" Filch asked, thumping the jar down on the edge of the desk.

Snape paused to consider for a moment. "Or possibly hexed. Won't know until I've finished these tests."

Filch went still. "Students?"

"Could be." Privately, Snape suspected everyone right down to the staff; even the house-elves were not immune from his suspicions. "I caught Bulstrode offering Zabini sweets doctored with a love potion today."

"Little buggers," Filch muttered under his breath. "Spoiled rotten, they are. Know nothing about the value of hard work. It's nothing but mess and muck from morn till night - with not a word of thanks, mind. And now this. Could do with a right good thrashing if you ask me."

The last sentence was said much louder than the rest, and Snape looked up from his work for the first time, meeting his eyes. "All in good time. We've got to catch them first."

Filch smirked at him and he smirked back, feeling a moment of pure connection, and the crawling sensation under his skin faded into the background.

*

Though Snape spent hours that night and most of the next day slaving over the samples, all his hard work counted for naught in the end. None of the diagnostic tests seemed to work; he hadn't found a trace of the usual love potions or charms in any of the samples they had collected.

"Nothing?" Filch asked, with a slight frown. "Is that good or bad?" He crowded close in the narrow bed, running his hand down Snape's bare torso in a way that made Snape want to squirm with pleasure. Even now, spent, he couldn't get enough.

"What?" he asked, stretching his arms up over his head, lazy and indulgent. "I'm not sure I follow."

"Have we been hexed?"

The question was like a slap to the face, and Snape's head hit the pillows with a thump, all trace of complacency gone. He had been far too busy congratulating himself on his discovery to consider the ramifications - beyond the several new and inventive punishments he had dreamed up for the culprit anyway. "I don't know," he said, staring blankly up at the unadorned ceiling. "It wasn't anything obvious, but the symptoms suggest..." He shook his head. "I can't discount it. Perhaps a more obscure method was used."

"The Professor and the Squib too unlikely a tale for you, is it, eh?" Though Filch's voice was harsh, his pale eyes gleamed with a nameless emotion.

"Don't pretend you don't feel it, Filch," Snape said, dragging the sheet up between them. Adrenaline pumped around his body as though he were preparing for a fight. "We're behaving like... like students. It's not normal."

"Maybe so. Maybe so." Filch shook head slowly, and the tension bled from Snape's body as quickly as it had come, until he felt as weary as Filch looked. "Question is what happens now."

"We could ignore it." Snape was looking at Filch out of the corner of his eye, afraid to look at him head on.

"Because we're both such trusting fellows, who would never get to wondering whether the charm was wearing off with every little hiccup. Best keep our distance till it's over an' then see."

Snape couldn't make himself disagree, and he couldn't make himself leave. He rolled to face the fireplace, too irritated to look at Filch. Filch seemed to understand, though, and put his arm awkwardly around Snape, pressing in close. "How long," he asked, after they had lain there a short while.

"No idea," Snape said shortly. "I thought we'd established that this isn't something I've come across before."

"How will we know when it's over, then?"

"I imagine the fact that I've stopped throwing myself at you might give you a clue."

"No point in getting your knickers in a twist, Professor," Filch said lightly, but there was a miserable, pinched look to his face when Snape turned to look at him. Snape knew his temper was his biggest problem when it came to relationships and decided to get out before he did some irreversible damage.

Mrs Norris rushed inside when he opened the door and jumped onto the bed, occupying the space he had vacated. Filch reached out a hand to stroke her, crooning absentmindedly as he did so, and Snape had never hated another living creature as much as he did in that moment.

*

Snape slept poorly that night, dreams forming strange patterns in his head, and the morning brought no better comfort. His bed was cold with no one to share it, and his usual morning tea had been exchanged for a bitter herbal blend.

He ventured out for breakfast to escape the yawning emptiness of his rooms and found pandemonium still reigned in the halls. It brought him the pleasure of taking fifty points from Gryffindor when an argument broke out between a couple of their chasers and the amusement of watching them try to defend their behaviour with bats flying out of their noses every time they sneezed. But in the great hall he found some fool had swapped his usual tea and toast for waffles with spiced orange syrup and more of that revolting herbal tea.

The idiots truly had taken over the asylum it seemed.

He sought the sanctuary of his office to work on the counter Imperius potion again, but the peace he found there was short lived.

"Fifty points!"

"Ah, Minerva, I see you've heard," he said, leaning back in his chair and smirking at her. "Do come in."

"I am already in, Severus. Now explain yourself."

"Now, now, Minerva, calm yourself. I understand the difficulty your girls must face trying to find suitable escorts for the Yule Ball within the ranks of Gryffindor, but duelling in the halls really cannot be condoned. What would the headmaster say?"

"Albus wouldn't give two hoots about students duelling in the halls as you very well know, especially on a day like today."

"Be that as it may, what's done is done."

Minerva narrowed her eyes. "Fifty points for such a minor infraction. A bit of friendly house rivalry is one thing, but you have gone too far this time, Severus. Now, I'm not leaving here until we settle this once and for all."

She pulled out the chair opposite and sat down heavily. Damn and blast the woman. It was clear he wasn't going to get anymore work done in his office that morning, so he shoved back his own chair and got to his feet, keeping his smirk firmly in place. "Make yourself comfortable," he said, with an airy wave of his hand. "I was just leaving."

He headed toward the library, which was usually quiet this time of year. As it was the holidays most students avoided it like the plague. Half an hour in, he became peripherally aware that Miss Arnaut and Miss Vaisey, two of his sixth years, were whispering together at the next table. They kept looking over in his direction. After few minutes of this he raised his eyebrows at them and said, "Yes."

Miss Vaisey nudged Miss Arnaut, who got up and came over. "Professor, you know the Yule Ball. Well, I thought..."

Snape cut her off with a glare. "Miss Arnaut, I am not an escort service. Nor should you save me a place on your dance card, are we clear? I trust you have a more intelligent question for me. Otherwise..."

Miss Arnaut, sensible girl that she was, fled before he could finish that statement, but it wasn't long before he heard what he thought was Minerva's voice, and had to flee, himself.

He tried the staff room, thinking she might have searched there already, but what he found there beggared belief.

"I trust there is some logic behind this," he said to Hagrid, who had covered the long staff table with leaves, twigs and bits of twine.

"Well, I've just cleaned my place up fer... fer... Anyway, I didn't want ter make a mess."

"So you thought you'd come and make a mess here. How thoughtful. Well, do tell, what is it you're making?"

Hagrid beamed at him. "I thought yeh'd be interested. It's a broom."

"I see, because this school is entirely lacking in brooms."

"No, it's a proper one," he said, and winked. Snape recognised that the twigs he was currently stripping were in fact Cytisus scoparius or scotch broom. Hagrid leaned in conspiratorially. "It's a gift."

It was enough to make Snape's head ache. What he really wanted after his trying morning was to sit somewhere quiet with a nice cup of tea, so naturally when he entered the kitchen, there was Filch.

The moment their eyes met Snape got a sucking feeling in his chest as though he couldn't breathe. Living in a primitive society would have advantages, he realised. At that moment, he wanted nothing more than to drag Filch back to his rooms - by his hair if necessary - and have his way with him.

"This isn't going to work," he sighed. "Perhaps a timetable."

*

The timetable was a wonderful idea, with only one minor - all right, major - flaw. They were cohabiting in a confined space and saw each other, on average, ten times a day. Disaster struck in the staff room the next afternoon.

"You look like hell," Snape said, taking in Filch's bloodshot eyes.

"Can't sleep," Filch said, and took a step closer.

Snape put his head in his hands. "Don't!"

Filch kept coming. "Can't work either." And coming. "Nor eat." And coming. "Nor think about nothing but you. Tell me, Professor, would you have been so quick to believe it was a potion if it were someone other than me?"

Snape's head shot up. "Are you blaming me for this?" Then his eyes widened, and he said, "Oh, fuck," as Filch shoved him up against the nearest wall.

One thing naturally led to another, which led to frottage on the staff room table, then McGonagall shrieking in his ear, and a conversation in the headmaster's office.

Snape leaned forward in his chair. Perhaps he wasn't being clear. "You don't understand. It's as if we're under some sort of compulsion."

Dumbledore gave a little cough, looking amused. "Ah, new love. I understand it takes some people that way." Snape drew in breath to protest, but Albus smiled at him and patted his knee. "Just try to keep it out of the staff room in future."

"The man's infuriating," he said, storming into Filch's office. "You would think he was being deliberately obtuse. And that look he gets on his face like he's some doddering old fool makes me want to wring his neck."

"Hmm." Filch held the gilt frame he was cleaning out in front of himself, turning it this way and that, and frowning, like he hadn't heard a word Snape had said.

"Aren't you going to say anything?"

"And here I thought we'd agreed the subject of Dumbledore was off limits."

The small, smug smile on his face was every bit as annoying as the one on Dumbledore's. Snape hauled him up out of the chair by his shirtfront, sending the frame clattering onto the desk, pushed him up against the wall and did his best to kiss it away.

Filch still looked fairly pleased with himself when Snape was done. "I guess this means you'd rather I didn't stay away from now on."

*

Christmas morning dawned fine and bright. Snape hadn't got Filch a gift, but the blowjob he had offered had gone down a treat. Well enough, in fact, that Filch had even allowed him to top for once. They parted company after a leisurely breakfast, Snape to tend his Slytherins and Filch to tend to any last minute tasks for the ball, but Snape found him down in the Entrance Hall again mid-morning.

"What are you doing?" he asked, casting an appraising eye over the rough handmade broom Filch held in his hand. Some of the twigs had come loose from their bindings. They caught in the flagstones, spreading out across the floor behind Filch as he swept.

Filch narrowed his eyes. "Cleaning up after folks that haven't learned to clean up after themselves. What's it look like?"

"With that?" Snape very carefully did not laugh.

"No need to look so look so amused," Filch said, scowling. "It's all I've got. Some fool stole all my others." He resumed sweeping with great vigour. "Put a dirty great bow around it an' all, like it was some sort of present."

"Present," Snape spluttered.

"Hey," Filch called, at Snape's retreating back. "Where are you off to now?"

Snape didn't respond, his brain working nineteen to the dozen as he barged out the front doors into the sunlight. He didn't stop until he reached Hagrid's hut where he knocked and then threw open the door without so much as a by your leave.

"It was you."

"Eh." Hagrid looked up from behind a great pile of mending. Five or six brooms were propped up in a corner behind him.

"Don't give me that," Snape said, leaning on the kitchen table and trying as much as possible to loom over Hagrid. "You know exactly why I've come."

"Yeh'd like some tea, then, would yeh?"

"No, I don't want any bloody tea. I want to know why you did it." He paused and looked at Hagrid, mouth agape. "It was the tea, wasn't it? You devious bastard, you had me make it myself."

Hagrid looked a bit shamefaced. "Sorry 'bout that. Yeh weren't s'posed ter do the work yerself, an' I did try a few charms an' that first."

A few charms and that. Snape felt ill; it was no wonder he had been acting so strangely. "Do you have any idea what you could have done mixing magic like that? I could have done anything, to anyone."

Hagrid held up his hands in front of him, waving Snape away. "It weren't like that. It's like yeh said, Professor. It weren't goin' ter make yeh do anythin' yeh didn't want ter. Only make yeh both more receptive like."

"You're missing the point, Hagrid," he began, but there was really no point in arguing with Hagrid. As he said, there was no real harm done either. He just wasn't sure how he was going to explain it to... "Both?"

Hagrid made a face. "Can't say as he'd've been my choice, but there's someone fer everyone now, ain't there? Tha's what me dad always said. And I've seen how yeh are tergether."

"You... I... What?" Snape said, sitting down in shock.

"Happy Christmas, Professor." Hagrid patted his arm. "Perhaps, yeh'd like that tea now, eh?" He fussed with the kettle and the teapot, looking his usual cheerful, if slightly barmy, self. All too easy to underestimate. Only now Snape knew how perceptive he could be. He had given Snape a gift. It was nothing he had ever wanted, but perfect nonetheless.

"What on earth was the broom for?" Snape asked, when Hagrid placed the cup in front of him, because something didn't quite add up.

"Me book says..." Hagrid shifted and his eyes wouldn't quite meet Snape's. "Anyway, it says they're used in marriage ceremonies an' the like."

"Marriage ceremonies? Tell me you didn't." Snape broke out in a cold sweat. He swallowed hard, his voice tight and panicked. "The brooms - Hagrid, you idiot - they give people brooms to produce fertile unions!" He had no idea how he was going to explain this to Filch.


End file.
